Who are you? Where are you? What do you watch on TV, and how do you choose to watch?

And, most critically to the TV decision-makers who decide what programs are made in any given year, why do you watch what you do?

Those questions percolate in the background whenever TV network executives face reporters. But at the just-concluded summer meeting of the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles, they took centre stage.

The overnight numbers suggest that viewers are defecting the traditional broadcast networks in droves. The numbers are deceiving, though, the decision-makers insists. Just as many people are watching TV as they ever did. In fact, they may be watching even more.

According to a recent cross-platform survey across the U.S. by ratings measurement agency Nielsen, average television consumption is up nearly two hours a month. According to Nielsen, the average viewer now watches 157 hours and 32 minutes a month.

“Which is amazing,” Fox Broadcasting Entertainment chairman Kevin Reilly said. “I think that more than justifies all our livelihoods. People are loving television. It’s a dynamic time for television.

“But how they’re watching it and when they’re watching it and what they’re watching is becoming a (complicated) tapestry, which can be difficult to get by the tail.”

Viewer behaviour is changing, Reilly acknowledged, and the broadcast networks need to do a better job of figuring out where the audience is and how people are watching.

The midseason thriller The Following, for example, averaged 11.8 million viewers the night it was broadcast. But when viewing over the following seven days was factored into the equation — through DVR recording, online streaming, Video-on-Demand, etc. — the audience jumped to 16.3 million viewers, Reilly noted, making The Following the network’s most-watched midseason program and one of the most-watched programs on TV.

In Canada, The Following drew 1.3 million viewers to CTV in any given week, good enough to land a spot in the Top 25 most-watched programs of that week, on any network.

That was not how it was reported, though, Reilly said. Most media stories cited only the immediate, overnight ratings numbers. And by that measure The Following was a modest success only.

“This is not spin,” Reilly said. “This is not to somehow suggest that Fox did better than it looked. We were down last year, and that’s a fact. We’re going to be up this year. This is really a look at, ‘Where is the audience?’”

New Girl draws 6.6 million viewers on any given night, Reilly added, but when later viewing is factored in, that number jumps to 9.46 million.

“That means 33 per cent of the viewing for New Girl happens outside traditional television.

It’s even more dramatic with a show like Family Guy. Thirty-seven per cent of the Family Guy audience watched outside the traditional same-night network broadcast. We don’t have a problem with that. It’s audience. They’re connected to Family Guy. They’re Fox viewers. But that’s where they are, and it’s not captured in that story.

“If you roll up some of the cumulative viewing for the season on some of our top shows, you see some unbelievable numbers. New Girl: 185 million views. The Following: 283 million views. American Idol: 560 million views. Sometimes I read stories that say nobody is watching network television anymore. Well, that’s a lot of nobodies.”

New Girl airs on City in Canada; The Following and American Idol air on CTV, and Family Guy airs on Global.

Competition has never been greater, because of the proliferation of cable channels. Reilly admitted to being a big admirer of the critically acclaimed IFC satirical comedy Portlandia, which airs on Super Channel and Netflix in Canada. Portlandia reaches a relatively small audience, however, compared to a mainstream comedy like New Girl or The Mindy Project.

“We’ve always been in the business of speaking loudly to a big audience,” Reilly said. “There are a lot of services now that speak loudly to a small audience. I think that’s OK. They’re putting on great shows.

“But I do think we have to try and keep things in perspective. Of the more than 1,000 basic cable shows last season, only four would have made it into the Top 50 shows on television. Four.

“I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about this. I think it’s all fair competition. I watch and love a lot of those shows. I don’t think we’re the bastard stepchild in a broken system.”

The Mindy Project, for example, was the highest-rated new comedy of the season last year, but it failed to get even half the media attention of Louie and Girls, even though the audience for Louie and Girls combined would still fall below that of Mindy.

“Obviously, I like Portlandia,” Reilly said. “But you’d have to play a Portlandia 12 times to equal the rating of New Girl.\

“Clearly I don’t think the broadcast system is broken or antiquated or run by inept people. In fact, I really respect most of my broadcast competitors. Most of them.

“So I’m not complaining about this. I really am not. I just think that in this marketplace, where we’re going to have more originals than ever before in the history of broadcast television, more good shows and more options, I want the analysis to be equal.”

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